Crazy Christmas December 25, 2008

A late Merry Christmas to everyone! Another rather funky day that started off not so hot and ended up well.

Woke up feeling like a zombie, got ready quickly, wrote out Christmas cards, and headed out. The sideroads still sucked, but thankfully my dad’s car got thru it all no prob. Chris and I picked up Liz, and my dad, and headed to my uncle Erik’s for brunch. A family friend and his girlfriend were there, and their dog, and my uncle ended up ix-naying having the doggies in the house. At least it was pretty and snowing 🙂

The usual breakfast prep chaos was underway when we got there, and we just kind of got out of the way. I realized the table was only going to fit 7-8 people, and there were 10 of us, so somehow I knew Chris and I would be relegated to the breakfast bar. No matter how old we get, we are still the kids of the bunch I guess. Sad thing was no one really paid much attention to us or cared we were off to the side. Oh well, we just killed the bottle of champagne on our own!

Breakfast tasted good, but was quite sinful. Thankfully I did not ever feel full! Coffee with 1/2 & 1/2 and a few glasses of champagne were my bevvies.

Second plate: apple crisp with whipped cream. Apples were good, crumb topping tasted a little funky, yet for some reason I ate it all anyway.

Then my mom was telling me “eat this, try this, eat this…” so I had one of her chocolate chip cookies. Mmm.

After breakfast the family friends left, and I thought we were going to open gifts but my grandma suddenly had ants in her pants and couldn’t stand hanging out there any longer since we “weren’t doing anything”. So for whatever reason we all went to her house to open the gifts, and prep the meat for dinner tonight.

No food there, thankfully! I did get a few really great gifts, tho: a grill pan and a kitchen scale. Yay! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOh, and 2 jars of Barney Butter Crunchy! My dad went ape shit on the gifts…if I knew he was getting 2 jars of the BB I’d have had him get the smooth, too. But whatever, I excited I get to try BB now, and will soon be reviewing it to get my free T-Shirt from Jennifer 🙂

Chris and I ended up going to my mom’s for the day since we didn’t have a car and live a long distance from where the action was (read–my dad didn’t want to drive us home/couldn’t give us the car/we had no chance in hell of getting home at this point). Lily was so funny in the car on the way over first half standing/half laying on the floor and seat, and then she laid down and put her head on the box in my mom’s lap. So cute!

My mom’s backyard. It was snowing while we were there!

I had some coffee in this cute penguin mug.

My mom and Lily checking out the presents and the tree:

Chris wasn’t happy at all about not being able to go home and relax between family events, but it all turned out just fine. He was able to read and then watch the Lakers/Celtics game. I helped clean up my mom’s kitchen, and in the process ate a few things: a spoon of pumpkin pie mix; a few little slices of parmesan (gift from the uncle–the real stuff); and a bite of a chocolate chip cookie (“taste this one”).

Chris put a red ribbon around Lily’s neck…I got a pic as she laid on me while I sat on the couch (not something she gets to do here at our house since she’s not allowed on the furniture [mostly]). LOVE the LB.

Around 5 Erik picked us up and back to Grandma’s we went. Non-meat eaters beware…plentiful meat pictures below.

We watched the beef like hawks, meaning it took forever to get done. My dad kept opening the oven to take the temp, readjusting the oven temp, etc., and like an hour later we sat down for dinner and it.was.so.good. Clockwise from the potato: twice baked potato; french green bean/onion/red pepper veggie medley (baked?); beef tenderloin seasoned with garlic, salt, and pepper, and cooked with a few slices of bacon on top for additional moisture. Wow! I also ate one 1/2 piece of the bacon.

This is my mom’s “chappin'” fruit salad: apples, banana, orange, maraschino cherries, walnuts, and whipped cream mixed in. Yowza. I should have stopped eating before I had this.

I also had a few glasses of yummy champagne (three types of champagne in all!), and an incredible Domaine Serene Evenstad Reserve Pinor Noir (2004?). After dinner my family cleaned up the dishes, and threw away far too many recyclable items. So, I did some sly garbage diving involving removing aluminum cans, foil, paper, and plastic from the trash. Yay for recycling!

Soon thereafter we had dessert: homemade pumpkin pie (my mom made it this afternoon) with too much freshly whipped cream. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

Okay, NOW I was way overly full and the discomfort lasted until a few hours later. Not like gut-busting full, but sorta painful tummy from too much food. It was worth it, tho, to have all that yummy food I suppose.

My dad gave Chris and I his car again (he can walk to work), and that means I can get to the gym no matter what tomorrow!!!!! Awesome… AND there’s a yoga class at 10:30. All the classes have been cancelled this week so far, but it seems like the roads are improving enough that it will be on tomorrow. We’ll see. Either way I plan on spending at least 2 hours at the gym to rev myself up and burn off some of today’s indulgences. Yee-haw. Seriously.

Shit, looking at www.tripcheck.org the road to the coast is mostly clear even at the summit now, so maybe Chris and I could make it down there tomorrow after all. We’ll see what happens.

I think I’m going to add another page to my blog–“The Three R’s”–to throw in add’l recycling links, suggestions, Master Recylcer stuff, etc. Hope it helps inspire you to be green, reduce, reuse, recycle, and think more about reducing your impact on the environment. Hope you’ll visit that page, too!

Aw, the LB is curled into such a tiny ball right now. She contorts herself into some of the most uncomfortable looking positions sometimes…I don’t know how she sleeps in them.